This article is republished from National Review with the permission of the author.

The other week, I discussed a Nature editorial advocating that scientists be required to “register” with the state. That policy, if enacted, would be a step toward establishing a technocratic rule-by-experts system by controlling what would be acceptable scientific discourse and who would be authorized to communicate about such matters.

A new proposal, also in Nature, would push the West toward technocracy. The science journal just published a piece urging the U.N. to establish a panel of scientists — the International Panel on Inequality (IPI) — to determine policies involving income and wealth inequality. From “Why We Need an International Panel on Inequality”:

The consequences [of wealth disparities] are well established. A growing body of research links higher income inequality to lower social mobility, poorer health outcomes and slower economic growth. Unequal access to education, health care, housing and finance shapes the opportunities that direct people’s lives.

Yet, all this knowledge has not produced a policy response. One reason is political: inequalities create powerful beneficiaries.

Perhaps. But how is this a science issue?

It isn’t:

Evidence on inequality is dispersed across disciplines and institutions. Research on policy effectiveness — showing what has worked, in which contexts and through which mechanisms — is insufficiently synthesized and often inaccessible.

This calls for a U.N. panel of scientific experts!

What’s needed is an independent scientific body mirroring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This would periodically and systematically assess evidence on the scale, nature, drivers and consequences of inequality. It would also evaluate evidence on policies and synthesize the conclusions from the successes and failures of different countries.

Again, how is any of this about science? I looked for answers and found many assertions but little of scientific relevance. However, there is plenty of sociological jargon:

The IPI could help by clarifying the strengths and limitations of different approaches, to improve the measurement of inequality. It could explain why estimates and trends diverge, identify findings that are robust across methods, clarify how to combine complementary measures and encourage greater transparency, harmonization and standardization. For example, governments need a standardized way of augmenting survey data to present a more accurate picture of inequality levels and top incomes.

Then, the authors reveal the true purpose: punishing wealth:

Wealth inequality deserves special attention. Wealth is linked to power and influence, and inherited wealth perpetuates inequality across generations. Wealth inequality is generally more pronounced than income inequality, yet wealth data are weaker. Globally, income from wealth remains highly concentrated, with a Gini of 0.94, and 80% of the world’s population receives zero or near-zero income from wealth. Assets are often hidden, under-reported or difficult to value, and comparable administrative and tax data are unavailable in many countries.

The IPI could bolster efforts worldwide to improve data on wealth inequality through analyses of inheritance and other tax data, for example, and could help governments to develop tools to do this.

That’s ideology, not science.

In the end, even the authors admit that these questions aren’t really scientific but a means of bootstrapping ideological goals into fruition:

Judgements about which inequalities are unjust and which policy trade-offs are acceptable cannot be settled by science alone. But making those judgements requires understanding the trade-offs. Inequality evidence is produced across a wide range of methods, institutions and disciplines (including economics, political science, sociology, public health, law, history and environmental science). Data are often hard to compare, causal explanations are dependent on context and the policies themselves are objects of political conflict.

The value of an international panel would be to make available evidence clearer, more systematic and more difficult to ignore.

Technocracy is ultimately about determining the moral values that govern society. It does not countenance competing centers of authority. Reframing subjective policy issues as questions of objective “science” makes it easier to justify relying on “experts” for policy answers, thereby enfeebling democratic institutions by empowering a bureaucratic system of governance.